One team that sticks out is the Gretzky Kings. I remember thinking of Hrudey as incompetent and watching videos of that cup run years later never really gave me cause to question that recollection. Even when he was making saves, he wasn't doing it in a way that inspired much confidence, at least not from me.
Though, his Vezina voting results indicates that he was viewed to be average or slightly above average for a starter for most of his career, so maybe it was just me not thinking much of the guy.
Hrudey is a difficult player to get a bead on. I think a lot of people -- esp. outside of western-Canada and California -- remember him mainly for his playoff appearances with L.A., during which he was mostly awful.
In the regular season, his stats don't look particularly impressive at first glance, but in fact he may have been the best goalie in the NHL in 1985-86 regular season. And if you look at his GSAA (goals saved above average), he was good to great most seasons of his career. It's just that the Islanders were starting to crap out just as he took over the #1 spot from Billy Smith, and then he went to L.A. which had horrendous defence and often gave up 40-45 shots against to lesser teams as a matter of course.
The early days (1985, and of course 1987's 'Easter Epic') aside, Hrudey just couldn't get it together in the playoffs, especially with the Kings. He -- like Wayne Gretzky, actually -- was particularly bad against Edmonton in 1990, 1991, and 1992. (At least Gretzky had the excuse that it was his former team and he was being 'Tikkanen-ed'.) Hrudey just couldn't stop a beach-ball against Edmonton those years, and he wasn't much better against Calgary in 1989 or 1993 (it's often forgotten he was pulled in '93 and lost the starting job to Robb Stauber to close out the first round vs. the Flames, before going back in for the run to the Finals).
Take the 1991 Kings as an example of how Hrudey let them down: L.A. was third-overall that season, after the best RS in franchise history (they had the best goal differential in the entire League, in fact). They finished 22 points ahead of Edmonton, which was then a .500 team struggling to score. Gretzky had probably his best-ever year as a King, and from January 3rd onward the team went 27-10-5. They got it together against Vancouver after falling behind, but then ran into Edmonton. With the series tied 1-1, game three goes into double overtime, and is won by Esa Tikkanen on this goal:
Now, granted, the Oilers were on home-ice and they out-shot L.A. in this game, so you could argue they were more likely to win anyway. But when your starter lets in a shot like that in double overtime, against a team you're supposed to beat, it just demoralizes the team.
But this tended to be Hrudey's pattern in overtime -- whiffing on shots he should stop, or over-committing and getting burned (as with LeClair's two OT goals in the '93 Finals).
Maybe Hrudey's "legacy" would be stronger if he had had nerves of steel in the playoffs. It seems he got worse when the pressure was on.
